as light and transparent, with colourful but discreet percussion, including celeste and vibraphone. To end the virtuoso display the soloist plays a rising C-sharp minor scale, with a harmonic on high C-sharp, marked col legno. 3. Tema ed improvvisazioni The C major finale, the longest of the three movements, consists of a theme and four "improvisations" – individual episodes loosely based on elements of the theme – followed by an extended coda. It reverts to the mood of the first movement, with an elaborate theme for the cello in its high register over a pizzicato in the orchestral strings. The theme presents rising and falling patterns in its opening bars, followed by a series of descending triads and a pair of rising scales. A passage for solo cello links the theme to the first improvisation, in which the outline of the theme is given in the orchestral part, at a constant tempo throughout – "a shimmer of tremolando strings and the exotic interventions of xylophone, vibraphone, celesta, and harp". Against this is a cello counter-melody in triplet rhythms. The second improvisation is a virtuoso display for the unaccompanied soloist, marked brioso (vivaciously). Both Howes and Burton comment that this bravura section serves instead of the usual concerto cadenza. The third improvisation is a brilliant orchestral toccata; Howes calls it "a rumbustious affair with a good deal of percussion, glissandi for horns and harps, use of the piccolo and such excitements." The fourth, for unaccompanied cello, is marked "rhapsodically" (rapsodicamente), and has wide fluctuations of speed; it ends with high trills, which merge into the coda. The coda refers back to themes from the first movement, first an upward-striving figure from its central section and then the opening melody, before the theme of the finale returns in compressed from, leading the movement towards a quiet, luminous ending, and a bottom C from the cello. Kennedy comments, "It is a stony heart that cannot respond to the urgings of this work's coda", but during the composition Piatigorsky hankered after a more bravura ending. Walton composed two alternative ones, but the original quiet conclusion was played at the premiere and has remained the standard version. In 1974 the composer reconsidered the ending and wondered if Piatigorsky (and Heifetz, who shared the cellist's view) might have been right. Walton composed a third ending and sent it to Piatigorsky, but by then the cellist was